Culture Shock! China - A Survival Guide to Customs and Etiquette, 2nd Edition

Learning the Language 205

Chinese-Western relations. Businesspeople do at times find
themselves speaking of the need to kowtow to this or that
Chinese official, but describing the situation that way in
Chinese would not likely help.
The one area where useful cognates are common is
food.In many cases, you can easily work backward from
borrowed English words to find the correct Chinese words:
tofu (dofu), chow mein (chao mian), lo mein (lao mian) and
chop suey (chao sui—literally ‘stir-fried leftover bits’) are just
a few examples.
There are also in today’s spoken Chinese a few cognates
borrowed from English phonetically using sound-alike
characters, again often involving foods. For instance, ऻ٬
(kafei) is a fairly recognisable sound for ‘coffee’, and Дݸ
Ў (hanbaobao), with a little imagination, is recognisable as
‘hamburger’. The aid these cognates will give you in learning
the language is limited, but they are fun.
Following is a list of a few simple basic phrases in Chinese,
and any decent phrase book will get you talking more.

Forms of Address

I wo

you ni

he/ she/ it ta

we wo men

you guys ni men

they ta men

father ba ba

mother ma ma

kids xiao hai

Timing

time shi jian

today jing tian

tomorrow ming tian

Monday li bai yi